Tetra Tech Planning provided planning and technical consultancy to South West Scotland’s award-winning woodland retreat, Westland Country Park. Our work helped secure a new holiday lodge, caravan, and camping site – the positive outcome of which led the client to commission a second phase of development involving 45 more lodges.
Photos courtesy of Westlands Country Park
Challenges
Located in the rural South West Scotland within the Dumfries and Galloway area, this former outdoor adventure site needed numerous complexities addressed if the planning application for this development was to succeed.
Surrounded by natural and plantation woodlands, in addition to containing two large fishing ponds and some peat deposit, the site demanded that our ecology experts step in to assess any adverse effects from this development. Given the limited foul drainage present, we also needed to design a bespoke onsite waste treatment package.
As the planning phase progressed, other important considerations came into view, such as visual intrusion. It was clear that our planning support would have to take a holistic approach.
Solutions
To advise our client on the best way to secure a positive planning decision, we provided land-use planning expertise, while also weaving in our other support services, including topographic surveying, ecology, flood risk and drainage, and transport assessment work. These supporting technical services were project managed to ensure the right level of information was supplied in the planning application to better inform Dumfries and Galloway Council’s decision-making.
Tetra Tech Planning’s expertise influenced the design and layout of the scheme so the new leisure development accentuated natural landscape features and minimised visual intrusion, especially from public vantage points like the nearby road. The support provided by our ecologists also allowed the development to both minimise impact on habitats and provide net benefits.
Outcome
With our client pleased with the outcome, Tetra Tech Planning was commissioned to prepare and submit a second phase of the development amounting to another 45 holiday lodges at the site using the same planning and design principles established for Phase I.
Tetra Tech Planning later provided the planning consultancy support to win planning permission for an enlarged and now completed visitor centre building, together with a 35-metre-high clay pigeon shooting tower – the tallest shooting tower in Scotland. The latter required the support of Tetra Tech’s landscape architects to prepare an assessment supporting the application.
